The image in the top right of the panel labeled “60 min” in Figure 2A, when rotated 90° counterclockwise, appears to be more similar than would be expected to that at the top right of the panel labeled “30 min” in Figure 6A.

The image showing CPP32-stained bands in the far right lane of Figure 5A (3000 g of extract, treated with mastoparan) appears to be more similar than would be expected to that in the far right lane of Figure 8 (16,000 g of extract, treated with cytochromec/dATP).

In Figure 6C, the fodrin-stained band in the far left lane (16,000 g of extract) appears to be more similar than would be expected to that in the left lane under Bcl-2 treatment (3000 g of extract).

In response to the editors’ concerns, the corresponding author writes that the authors state “unequivocally that there was no misrepresentation of data, nor was there any scientific misconduct.”

The paper has been cited 170 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

The pseudonymous Clare Francis was apparently the reader who alerted the the journal to the issues, back in February. Yesterday, Peggy Mason, the chair of the ethics committee for the Society for Neuroscience, which publishes the journal, wrote Francis:

We found merit in your concerns and agreed that several images appeared to be re-used. The authors emphatically denied this. In the face of their denial, we would ordinarily have written to request an institutional inquiry. However, given the long period since publication and the re-location of authors to other institutions, we deemed it unlikely that this tact would be useful. Therefore, we published a notice of concern.

Lar, You would think so, but editors don’t really care about the integrity of a scientific body of knowledge. Its all about power, publishing, and reputation. JAMA issued its first ever “expression of concern” last year about a fraudulent hip protector study authored by Douglas Kiel of Harvard—the study text lives on with no connection to the useless expression of concern—its all a joke with these guys.

1) The paper is a “who’s who” of heavy-hitters in the early days of mitochondrial signaling/apoptosis/cytochrome c release. Dale Bredesen was until recently the head of the Buck Institute for Aging Research (Lisa Ellerby is there now). Guy Salvesen was head of the US Editorial Office for Biochem J. Doug Green has been Chair of Immunology at St. Jude for a number of years. This is certainly not a group from the backwaters of the field who faded into obscurity, but rather a group of individuals who might be colloquially referred to as superstars. Did this influence the decision in any way?

2) J. Neurosci (in my personal experience) has been somewhat reluctant to act on similar problems. In one case they agreed with me that blots were spliced together, but said that a correction “would not serve any purpose” because it didn’t change the conclusions. Also they stated that at the time of the publication the journal did not have an official policy on splicing. They do have a policy now, and claimed it would be overly punitive to retroactively apply such a policy. To me this seems rather lacking in wisdom (that’s not the way I would describe it verbally in private over a few beers, but you get my drift).

Thank you for your analysis. Finding the coincidences was almost entertaining. If I can’t trust Figure 3 and Figure 6, then I can’t trust the two main messages of the paper, that inhibition of ARK resulted in “pronounced inhibition of stress-induced apoptosis” and that “cells in which cytochrome c expression was decreased underwent apoptosis induced by stress stimuli”. The work was funded by NIH: “This work was supported by grants AI40646 and CA69381 from the National Institutes of Health (to D.R. Green).” The paper is 13 years old, and past the six-year limitation established by NIH-ORI. However, the paper was cited last year by one of the authors: Mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis is ancestral in metazoans, 4904–4909 | PNAS | March 27, 2012 | vol. 109 | no. 13. Therefore, the exception to the six-year rule should be applied: “Subsequent use exception. The respondent continues or renews any incident of alleged research misconduct that occurred before the six-year limitation through the citation, republication or other use for the potential benefit of the respondent of the research record that is alleged to have been fabricated, falsified, or plagiarized.” The case should not be considered closed. The coincidences are outrageous. NIH-ORI should investigate this.

The four lanes of the right panel of Fig. 2A “appear to be more similar than would be expected” to the left four lanes of Fig. 2C, though with added stars. To see this just look at those worm tracks crawling across the gel. They are a whiter shade of pale!

There is more to this figure than worms however.

In the left gel panel of Fig. 2A, lanes for caspases 9 and 10 “appear to be more similar than would be expected” to caspases 3 and 4. The splice between caspases 8 and 9 is clear, as is the reversing of the gel smile in the lower bands.

In the middle gel panel of Fig. 2A, lanes for caspases 9 and 10 “appear to be more similar than would be expected” to caspases 4 and 5. Note the vertical blemish in the middle of lanes 4 and 9.

The figures presented in the original version of this article were assembled from different gels without indicating in the figures and figure legends that such assembly had occurred as required by Journal of Biological Chemistry policy. The corrected figures are presented, and the changes are indicated below. An incorrect image of supplemental Fig. 1 was used and has been replaced on line. The conclusions of the article are unchanged by these corrections. We regret any confusion that this has caused readers.”

-funny, they mention the splicing, but not the bands and lanes that appear to be more similar than would be expected.

Thanks Michael, I had missed the earlier correction to PMID:17646170. For there to have been a correction, some noble soul must have reported issues through the “proper channels”. The case will be considered closed. Of course, as we now know, it has not yet been corrected nearly enough to change the conclusions.

That was a very good spot for the duplicated noisy lanes in Fig. 6.

May as well bring Figure 7 into the frame too. 7B, Tubulin control, the lane 2 band “appears to be more similar than would be expected” to lane 5. Lanes 4 and 6 may have a common origin too.

I wish Neuroskeptic hadn’t mentioned worms. Now I’ve got that Baha Men song going around in my head:

After looking at the examples posted by hardman and Scrut, it does look as if serious faking has been going on.

But what can the journal do? Without a finding of misconduct and with the stern denial by the authors, the editor will be hard pressed to justify a retraction.

I think the original institution(s) has the responsibility to investigate. Current employers will be correct to state that they don’t have the ability to investigate previous misconduct at a different institution. Also, there might still be some petty vindictive scoundrels at the old department willing to agitate for an investigation.

Surely the thing would be for Clare Francis to take the ethics chairs letter to the administration of the original institution herself. Their name is on the paper(s) and ultimately it is their responsibility.

The correct way to deal with this (problems in papers spread across a number of years and institutions) is to package it all up and send a big file to the ORI. Then they can figure out how to go about investigating – which institutions, who is ultimately responsible, etc With ORI oversight, what the journals or institutions want to do is supposed to be a moot point.

The only downside is their 6 year statute-of-limitations. The way I interpret this is they will only bring action for federally funded research published within the past 6 years. But, that doesn’t mean they have to ignore “evidence” from earlier times when building a case against something within the SOL time-frame. So, if you’re sending a big pack of evidence to the ORI, so long as at least one of the papers in there is within that 6 year limit, they’re obliged to look at the whole picture.

Sec. 93.105 Time limitations. (a) Six-year limitation. This part applies only to research misconduct occurring within six years of the date HHS or an institution receives an allegation of research misconduct. (b) Exceptions to the six-year limitation. Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply in the following instances: (1) Subsequent use exception. The respondent continues or renews any incident of alleged research misconduct that occurred before the six-year limitation through the citation, republication or other use for the potential benefit of the respondent of the research record that is alleged to have been fabricated, falsified, or plagiarized. (2) Health or safety of the public exception. If ORI or the institution, following consultation with ORI, determines that the alleged misconduct, if it occurred, would possibly have a substantial adverse effect on the health or safety of the public. (3) “Grandfather” exception. If HHS or an institution received the allegation of research misconduct before the effective date of this part.

David, I really wish we had someone with such a clinical eye in plant science to look at the gels in plant science-related papers. I have tried to look at some of the figures you point out as critically as possible, but as a layman, I most likely would never have seen some of these errors, which might explain why the editors or “peers” may not have picked up on these errors either, during peer review. Unfortunately, in plant science, few are willing to retrospectively look at these issues, even less those with talent and skills, as they are all too busy doing research, or fulfilling other functions. Are you aware of any useful guidelines that could help non-specialist researchers detect problems with gel images? I will soon be making a wide call for PPPR among plant science peers, so I am trying to prepare some guidelines about how post-publication peer review could be achieved more easily.